Intercept (45 page)

“No, my brothers. We do not require any of that. Just the elimination of more than a thousand United States citizens. That will bring us all the glory we need.”

Ibrahim called for questions. And there was only one, from Yousaf Mohammed. “I accept that the first two handcarts will go into the school without causing attention,” he said. “But will it not seem strange to see seven more cases being unloaded from the school bus, right outside the building, by a group of men all dressed the same?”

“It might,” replied Ibrahim. “But there will be no one outside on that north wall. Any late arrivals will be hurrying in through the front door. We will have four men on the carts, four more will enter the school to help with our unloading and box-placement. Our final two men, ‘Joe’ and ‘Fred’ will be pulling the crates out of the bus.”

“And should anyone stray down that north side?” asked Yousaf.

“Shoot them, on sight.”

 

 

THE BUS HAD NOT MOVED
one inch by nine o’clock, and Johnny Strauss was about ready to leave. It had long been agreed that the two Special Forces men, Mack and Benny, would operate the business end of the operation, and that Johnny Strauss, New York terrorist hunter, would make a photographic dossier of everyone involved. At the end of the mission, Johnny wanted to know precisely who was dead and who was alive. He wanted pictures of suspects. He wanted clear prints of everyone who came to Mountainside that morning, and everyone who left. Not to mention those who came back.

His weapon of choice was a thirty-year-old Canon given him by a newspaper photographer friend. It had a fabulous Long-Tom zoom lens, not too big and easily focused. Johnny’s buddy swore to God he shot the
Jerusalem Post’s
front page spread of the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square in 1981 on that very camera.

Right now the Canon, loaded with a new black-and-white film, was in its leather bag in Johnny’s SUV. He would develop the pictures himself in the basement of Banda Fine Arts.

They shook hands before he left and wished each other luck, and then Johnny was gone, directly to the wooded entrance of Mountainside Farm, where he would conceal himself in the dense trees across the narrow road. The other two had another cup of coffee and kept on watching the screen. The bus still had not moved.

Mack and Benny were ready, organized to the smallest degree. The Nissan was waiting in the parking lot, and the portable detonator was on a hair-trigger once it was switched on. Just so long as that little red light on the other detonator kept flashing under the yellow school bus.

 

INSIDE THE ACADEMY
there was a kind of controlled chaos. Everyone understood where they should be, where they wanted to be, and where their offspring wanted them to be. Sometimes these three separate objectives came together as one. But mostly not, and the school corridors seethed with activity as parents and students made for the assembly hall and the school staff did what they could to guide their gigantic flock.

The school secretary, Ms. Marie Calvert, had already been in touch with the Torrington Police Department, to check the arrival of the cruiser that customarily parked at the main gate. This was mostly to prevent traffic queues, but also to check out arrivals, and to direct obvious commercial traffic to the school’s east gate, across the playing fields.

Officer Tony Marinello was already ensconced at the entrance with a checklist in his hand, informing him that all attending parents would have little green stickers featuring the Star of David on their windshields. All three of the school’s yellow buses would be arriving, two of them with visiting choirs, and one of them from the Yale Choral Society, which was shortly coming in from New Haven.

There was no foot traffic, and Tony was directing newcomers straight up the school drive, where the playing fields on the left near the main building were being used as run-off parking lots.

All school festival days attract heavy traffic, but a big country boarding school where so few of the students have parents anywhere near the place brings another dimension to the word travel. Hundreds of people were arriving from miles and miles away, tired, irritable, just wanting to park, get out, and find a cup of coffee. Some arrived early, before 8:30 a.m. Others thought they were running late and that events would start without them. And in the middle of all this, Officer Marinello had his work cut out to keep a semblance of order.

Two of the school buses were in before 9:15, and the Eli’s showed up ten minutes later. Tony Marinello waved them through, acknowledging two of the drivers he saw quite often locally. Right now he was sending a big white laundry van around to the east gate. Along the road there was a
line of cars building, waiting for him to remove the single red traffic cone he was using for flow control. Tony took his duties very seriously, no matter how small, or insignificant, they may have seemed.

At the age of twenty-eight, he was one of the most ambitious police officers in the entire state, and his diligence had already been noticed by his local commanding officers. He read the newspapers assiduously, and, unlike many of his colleagues, he understood the true significance of Canaan Academy. Tony understood, because he had made it his business to find out. He had that kind of mind, the kind all police officers should have, the kind that would surely take him right to the top of his chosen profession.

What he had seen when first he had passed this way was a grandiose entrance, the black iron gates, the stone lions, the manicured lawns, and beyond, a building that looked, from here, like a summer residence for King Henry VIII and all his wives. Tony, who was, at the time, in the process of certification from the Connecticut Police Academy in Meriden, swiftly worked out that somewhere, somehow, millions and millions of dollars were required to run this place. And he researched the life out of Canaan Academy, in the end understanding that this was the nursery for great Wall Street minds.

Future heads of legendary Wall Street investment banks were in attendance here. Sons and grandsons of men who had run fabled banks like Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Lazards, JPMorgan, and the New York Stock Exchange, were studying at the end of that long, tree-lined drive.

By the time he was through, Tony Marinello appreciated precisely the meaning of educational establishments like Canaan. And his further general knowledge of the international situation was also impressive. He understood the threats and hatreds that were often directed at the Israeli nation. He’d read the words of that maniac who somehow ran the Islamic Republic of Iran. And he knew there were many Arab countries that wished Israel would cease to exist.

To Tony that meant a lot of extra vigilance whenever he was dealing with anything with Jewish connotations. He believed there were dangers lurking everywhere. And he was a United States police officer, serving in the Great State of Connecticut, the Constitution State. It was his duty to be alert.

To many of his colleagues, this early morning task in the middle of nowhere would have been regarded as nothing more than a pain in the ass. To Tony it was an honor. Here he was, in command of the main gate
to the academy, trusted by the school and by his superiors to guard the students and protect their interests. Tony Marinello took it all extremely seriously. He moved the traffic cone and he waved the automobiles through, and he watched the windshields for the stickers.

 

IT WAS AFTER 9:30
and as of yet, no vehicle had left Mountainside Farm. Johnny Strauss was stationed in deep thicket, camouflaged by an autumn-red bush, surrounded by undergrowth and trees. It would have taken two men with three tracker dogs to find him.

The trusty and historic Canon with its zoom-lens was protected in its soft-leather case, and Johnny was scanning that wide, wooded area on the opposite side of the road all around the rough entrance to the farm, watching for vehicles making their exit. But he was also sweeping the area, checking for human presence in the trees. He was already on his guard, but he needed to know if he had an enemy right across the street. So far he had seen nothing.

He took a couple of shots of the woodland, and put in a call on his cell to Mack to find out if anything had shaken loose. But there was nothing yet. The electronics under the bus were all still active, but nothing had moved. And Strauss told Mack he had not seen anyone, either on foot or in a vehicle. There was not much to do except wait.

 

AT 9:45 IBRAHIM
ordered his team to start moving the straw bales that formed the front wall of the “shoebox.” Most put down their rifles to begin the heavy lifting. In teams of two they hauled the bales down and dropped them on the floor, where four more guys stacked them on a cart and dragged them to the end of the barn, eight at a time.

It was hard to accept how heavy straw bales could be. Every time Ben al-Turabi hoisted one up onto the stack, he swore to God someone had filled it with cement. It took fifteen minutes to remove the wall.

Ibrahim now spoke for the first time this morning about the getaway plan. “All of our explosive will be detonated simultaneously, by me,” he said. “Each box has a timed detonator, which has been adapted to receive an electronic impulse. The device was made by one of our Boston Sleeper Cells.

“The detonators have been extensively tested, and a sensor on each box is individually programmed to receive the signal. I will not detonate until every last one of you is out of the building. When the last box is in place
inside the academy, you are to make a very fast exit. Do not draw your weapons unless you have to.”

Ibrahim’s instructions were to use the first door, because he would be outside in the pick-up truck they’d been using all week. “By now the bus will have moved, up to the East gate, and you will pile into the rear of the truck.

“We will all drive together to the east gate. Abu will take the wheel, and I will detonate the bombs as soon as we are a hundred and fifty yards beyond the school walls. By then we will be traveling at sixty miles per hour, or thirty yards per second. Take into account the five-second delay on the remote control and that puts us three hundred yards clear when the bombs explode. We reach the bus thirty seconds later; everyone boards it and hits the deck.”

“How long before the police arrive at the school in force?”

“Probably fifteen minutes. They have to come from Torrington.”

“Where will we be at that point?”

“Probably approaching a little town called Sheffield to our north, over the border in Massachusetts. It’s the only town around there with a fast stretch of highway, about five miles long. Get us some distance. And get us out of Connecticut.”

“Who’ll be driving?”

“I will,” replied Ibrahim.

The men now began to move toward the bus, and Ibrahim spoke to them one last time. “You are all highly trained. Most of you have attended the camps in Pakistan, masterminded by the Glorious Osama. So make him proud of you, my brothers. And remember, your destiny is controlled by Allah alone. And Allah is great.”

Abu Hassan Akbar put on his bus driver’s cap and climbed into the driver’s seat. The rest followed in single file, sitting mostly on the floor. Ben al-Turabi sat on a seat next to Abu, who now started the engine and drove through the barn doors and into the farmyard. He hit the button to close the doors and revved the engine.

 

MACK SAW THE TRACKER
dot move for the first time on the screen. It was only about an eighth of an inch, but Mack was watching. He leapt to his feet, and exclaimed, “That’s it, Benny. That bus just left the barn.”

They unhooked the computer, closed the lid, and headed out to the parking lot. Everything they needed was in the Nissan, and they were on their way within seconds, Mack at the wheel.

Benny sat in the back seat with the open computer, and before they reached the car-park exit, he said, “The bus is moving, down the drive toward the road. They’re about three miles behind us right now. Hit it, Mack.”

The Nissan swerved right at the road, and Mack drove along toward the school. But a half-mile before he got there, he turned hard right, and then took a long left sweep through the woods, and came out on the northeast side of the school fields. They were looking straight across flat, mown grass, about two hundred yards to the main building.

 

JOHNNY STRAUSS HEARD
the school bus rumbling down the drive long before he saw it. Thirty yards before it reached the road, he started shooting, and in the bright morning light, he caught a set of brilliant photo portraits of both Abu Hassan Akbar and Ben al-Turabi.

They turned left at the gateposts, and Johnny shot them again, now from quite close range. There was no doubt in his mind who was in charge of that bus—they were the two serial killers of the Netanya Hotel and the Be’er Sheba bar mitzvah.

Right behind the bus came another vehicle, a kind of ramshackle farm truck, covered in mud with a lot of dents. He was almost certain it was the same one Mack had noted a few days previously. But he shot a good one of its registration, just to check.

He also shot excellent pictures of both men in the front seats, front and side-on. The driver was Ibrahim Sharif and the passenger Yousaf Mohammed, although neither man was known to him personally. But again, Johnny had been looking at that set of prison prints from Guantanamo for so long, he felt like he knew them. This time, however, there was a problem. The driver was fully bearded, and despite sensing it was the once clean-shaven Ibrahim from the photographs, Johnny could not be a hundred percent certain it was him.

Still, he believed these were the guys Mack Bedford was after—Ibrahim and Yousaf. And he called the former SEAL commander right away, just to let him know the line-up; to let him know the two men he wanted most were not on the bus. And that one of them had grown a full beard since the Guantanamo pictures.